The Mother Tongue

            By Eavan
Boland

            
               (posted Wednesday, Oct.
21, 1998)
            

            To hear the poet read "The
Mother Tongue," click .

            The old pale ditch can
still be seen less than half a mile from my house--

            its ancient barrier of mud
and brambleswhich mireth next unto Irishmenis now a mere rise of coarse grass,a
rowan tree and some thinned-out spruce,where a child is playing at
twilight.

            I stand in the shadows. I
find ithard to believe now that oncethis was a source of our division:

            Dug. Drained. Shored up
and leftto keep out and keep in. That herethe essence of a colony's defencewas
the substance of the quarrel with its purpose:

            Land. Ground. A line drawn
in rainand clay and the roots of wild broom--behind it the makings of a
city,beyond it rumours of a nation--by Dalkey and Kilternan and Balallythrough
two ways of saying their names.

            A window is suddenly
yellow.A woman is calling a child.She turns from her play and runs to her
name.Who came here under cover of darknessfrom Glenmalure and the Wicklow
hillsto the limits of this boundary? Who whisperedthe old names for love to
this earthand anger and ownership as it openedthe abyss of their future at
their feet?

            I was born on this side of
the Pale.I speak with the forked tongue of colony.But I stand in the first dark
and frost of a winter night in Dublin and imagine

            my pure
sound, my undivided speechtravelling to the edge of this silence.As if to find
me. And I listen: I hearwhat I am safe from. What I have lost.